Cinema Misfithttps://cinemamisfit.com
One misfit. Many movies. A few thoughts.Fri, 02 Feb 2018 01:21:54 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngCinema Misfithttps://cinemamisfit.com
Films Better Left Remembered: Gorath (1962)https://cinemamisfit.com/2016/12/30/films-better-left-remembered-gorath-1962/
https://cinemamisfit.com/2016/12/30/films-better-left-remembered-gorath-1962/#respondFri, 30 Dec 2016 18:59:07 +0000http://cinemamisfit.com/?p=313Continue reading →]]>In this early 60s change of pace offering from Toho Pictures, mankind is threatened not by a reawakened behemoth from the primordial past, but by a giant rock from outer space. Spaceship JX-1, the first manned flight to Saturn,is ordered to change course and intercept Gorath, a rouge star barreling through the cosmos and headed for a planet-shattering collision with the earth.

Outfitted in white coveralls and helmets, the crew of JX-1 look more like contestants in a go-cart race than astronauts, but in Gorath’s bold future of the 1980s, these are the men with the right stuff. When the crew is informed they are on what amounts to a suicide mission, they only hesitate a moment before raising their fists in the air and chanting, “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

While their esprit de corps is appreciated, it is also just a bit creepy.

Back on earth, high-ranking officials (peeved at not being consulted about the rerouting of JX-1) grudgingly concede that, yes, maybe the right decision was made even without their approval (useful information about the possible destruction of the earth was obtained, after all). Once everyone is on the same page about the need to do something about Gorath, the bean counters weigh-in with their penny-pinching take on the situation: it’s going to cost a lot of money to save the earth. Ultimately, it’s decided the job is too big for Japan to tackle alone, and before you can say UNICEF, the project is a United Nations operation.

Considering contemporary attitudes toward the UN—when, at best, a generous assessment might find the United Nations ineffectual and, at worst, part of a sinister cabal plotting world domination—Gorath’s vision of a united earth is probably the most implausible piece of speculation in a fairly improbable science fiction film. The belief that scientists could come up with a course of action every country on earth would get behind also seems a bit wide of the mark—especially considering the plan that’s eventually proposed.

Here is what the best and brightest recommend: building giant nuclear jets at the South Pole that will push the earth out of Gorath’s path. Seriously. But before anyone can point out that the earth’s rotation might be a problem, cargo ships are sent to the South Pole, and an impressive array of miniatures are deployed, clearing land and building the gigantic jets. After an extended montage of tiny flatbeds, cranes, dump trucks, and bulldozers moving across frame, Gorath begins to look less like a motion picture and more like a Tonka Toy commercial.

Finally, the enormous jets are ignited, and all that stands in the way of earth’s survival is—you probably guessed it—a giant walrus. Possibly freed from an icy hibernation by the heat of the nuclear reactors, it rampages through the UN’s command center. Upon learning of the giant walrus’ existence, the annoyed but blasé reaction of the chief scientist is, “I didn’t think an animal existed down here that could give us any trouble.” Possibly because he grew up in a country that has taken on Godzilla, Rodan, Ghidorah, and dozens of other giant monsters, the chief scientist finds it a bit difficult to get worked up about an oversized walrus. A hover-jet is dispatched to locate the immense marine mammal, and two laser blasts later, the problem is solved.

Planet-moving jets roaring, the earth is nudged out of the way, just as Gorath streaks by. While the rouge planet’s gravitational pull doesn’t result in Roland Emmerich scale destruction (or even Irwin Allen for that matter), the flooding of two minature cites provide the minimum cathartic experience of devastation and spectacle promised by the film (not to mention the fear mongering scientists).

Unfortunately, without massive maneuvering jets in the eastern and western hemispheres, the earth can only continue in one direction. Amid the worldwide celebration at averting total annihilation, it’s lucky no one overhears the following exchange between two scientists:

“Now we face our biggest job. We must put earth back on its original course.”

“We’ll need twice the nuclear power to put it back in its proper orbit. I’d say it’s a bit like walking on water.”

It’s not entirely clear what is meant by this last statement, but it doesn’t sound all that encouraging.

* * *

I was 11 in 1966 when I first saw Gorath at a theater in Downtown Los Angeles. It was on a triple bill with Dr. Strangelove and another film I’ve since forgotten. At the time, in my 11-year-old estimation, I ranked the two films as roughly equivalent. Over the years, however, Dr. Strangelove has gradually moved to the top of my personal list of all-time favorite films, and Gorath, admittedly, has dropped a rung or two, but I still enjoy its can-do, single-minded optimism and complete disdain for any fact that might get in the way of its goofy but visually bold premise. Rotation be damned, we’re moving the earth!

]]>https://cinemamisfit.com/2016/12/30/films-better-left-remembered-gorath-1962/feed/0RudGorathGorath 2Gorath 3Gorath 4Gorath 5Gorath 6Red Hot Tires (1935)https://cinemamisfit.com/2016/11/27/red-hot-tires-1935/
https://cinemamisfit.com/2016/11/27/red-hot-tires-1935/#respondSun, 27 Nov 2016 23:52:56 +0000http://cinemamisfit.com/?p=645Continue reading →]]>Constructed with the logic of Ping-pong balls imprinted with plot points and picked at random from a bingo cage, Red Hot Tires doesn’t waste any time and launches right into the action. Midget race cars roar forward in process shots, the peculiar aerodynamics of rear screen projection slightly diminishing the dramatic effect, the autos appearing to drift back and forth across frame like hovercraft. A perfectly acceptable opening for a B movie about car racing, it hardly prepares an audience for the story that follows, which doesn’t so much have a plot as a series of narrative non-sequiturs.

The race ends, and it’s disconcerting to learn that Johnny (Frankie Darro), the winner of the race, isn’t the hero of the movie but rather the young kid who wants to be like the hero, Wallace Storm (Lawrence Talbot), who has been standing “heroically” at the edge of the track…not doing much of anything. A dictionary definition of the word “hero” might read “a man of exceptional courage, nobility, and strength, who is celebrated for bold exploits,” but in Red Hot Tires, a hero is someone who drives a car—and that’s it.

Given the constraints of Storm’s character, it’s surprising how little driving he does. His heroics behind the wheel are restricted to a race at the beginning of the movie, which goes unfinished because of an accident, and part of one at the end. He is seen racing one other time, autos crashing and burning all around him, a crazy smile on his face as he threads his way through a montage of stock footage and newspaper headlines depicting his meteoric rise as a racer south of the border.

Despite being released in 1935 (two years after midget car racing became a sport), Red Hot Tires plays like the final entry in an extended series of films, doing its best to put a new spin on an old idea. But with decades of racing movies still to come, the basic story beats of the genre were far from played out. What seems more likely is that even in 1935, the fatal flaw in racecar movies was apparent.

A not unlikely story conference:

Director: I want to make a movie about men and machines, about what drives someone to race cars.

Producer: Right. But here’s my problem with that. Other kinds of races—running, skating, horse racing—they all go around the track one time. The final race in this movie you want to make, how many laps are there?

Director: 200.

Producer: Uh-huh. Listen. I’m just spit-balling here, but what if we throw in a murder?

Director: A what?

Producer: A murder. Or, anyway, a frame-up for murder, just to get away from the racetrack for a bit. There could be a big courtroom trial, also.

Director: I guess so, but then we’d get back to the racetrack, right?

Producer: Not so fast. We might be missing an opportunity here. (Pause.) I’ve got it! There could be a last-minute reprieve. Hell, while we’re at it, why not have a prison break?

Director: A last-minute reprieve and a prison break? But what about the race? Men and machines…

Producer: Yeah. You’ve got a point. What about this: the hero’s an escaped convict now. He hightails it down to South America, becomes a big sensation on the racing circuit there.

Director: He what? Hell. If you’re going to do all that, why not throw in a Ben-Hur angle?

Producer: Ben-Hur? That’s ridiculous. (Pause.) What’d you have in mind?

Director: I was being sarcastic! (The producer waits.) Spikes on wheels. The bad guy uses them in a race against the other drivers—except it backfires on him and he gets killed.

Producer: You know, that could work.

Like a racecar retooled for nothing but speed, Red Hot Tires has been stripped of back story, character development, and common sense to accommodate the crazy exigencies of its plot. The narrative swerves wildly all over the place as stars and supporting cast do double and triple duty simply to advance the story from one unlikely scene to the next. Bud Keene (Roscoe Karns), the comic sidekick, devises and executes a plan to break Storm out of prison; Patricia Sanford (Marry Astor), the love interest, designs racecars and convinces the governor to grant Storm a pardon; and Johnny (the only driver to actually win a race at this point) puts together who it was that framed Storm. Meanwhile, Storm, feeling sorry for himself, is furiously shoveling coal into a prison furnace, making life hard for the lifers who are forced to keep up with him.

Clocking in at 61 minutes, Red Hot Tires calls for a cast of “types,” one-dimensional characters without a past to explore or nuance to appreciate. Even so, with the hero perpetually waiting in the wings, the supporting cast is called upon to think and act independently. Relieved from the duties of love interest and comic sidekick, respectively, Patricia and Bud drive the hero’s car for the first 60 laps of the climactic 200-lap race. As the radio announcer and spectators cheer them on, there’s a sense of shared disbelief, a realization that maybe even supporting characters have a hero’s journey of their own to make.

Embracing the absurd right up to the very end, Red Hot Tires refuses to acknowledge the limitations of budget, geography, and logic. Storm is flown by biplane from Brazil to Daytona, and with the race already underway, the plane sets down on the infield of the track. Happily for Storm, the culprit responsible for the murder has been apprehended (thanks to Johnny), and a souped-up racecar (designed by Patricia and tested by Bud) waits in the pit. All Storm needs to do is slip in behind the wheel and perform the single function he is capable of: driving. 140 laps later, the checkered flag flashes, the race ends, and Storm heroically sits in the car, Patricia next to him, the crowd cheering his stage-managed victory.

The film’s final seconds tick down like the expiring moments of a fairytale spell; Bud, Johnny, two cops, and the presiding judge from Storm’s trial rush forward and surround the racecar. Storm announces his intention to marry Patricia, and she is transformed from intelligent, free-spirited heroine back into patient, supportive love interest. Everyone jokes that Storm and Patricia should adopt Johnny (although he appears to take it seriously), and Johnny regresses from independent problem solver to clueless juvenile. And Bud, briefly a thinking man of action, is relegated once again to comic sidekick status.

Before the cops can put the cuffs on Storm, the judge intercedes and explains the racer is no longer wanted by the law, clearing the way for the hero’s happy ending and a future of proscribed opportunities and narrow prospects for the rest of the cast. But even as the picture fades to black, there’s the hope one last crazy plot twist remains, something so ludicrous, so unexpected it will throw the movie wide open again.

Maybe Bud will become the fast-talking, quick-thinking campaign manager of the governor.

Or Johnny will pursue a career as a gumshoe, finding it more rewarding and exciting than racing cars.

Or maybe Patricia will ditch Storm at the wedding altar and decide what she really wants to do is not just design racecars–but race them.

But no, the screen goes black, and Red Hot Tires is over.

]]>https://cinemamisfit.com/2016/11/27/red-hot-tires-1935/feed/0RudRace cars useStorm drivingsupportersfliersrht 4Lonesome (1928)https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/09/03/lonesome-1928/
https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/09/03/lonesome-1928/#respondThu, 03 Sep 2015 18:45:56 +0000http://cinemamisfit.com/?p=293Continue reading →]]>Lonesome (1928) is part silent, part talkie, and all movie, in that the inquisitive, restless camera of director Pal Fejos is almost always in motion. Bold in its naked simplicity and uncompromising in its determination to reveal story and character through detail and incident, the movie (despite three brief sound sequences shoehorned in at the last minute) is one of the final examples of what silent films were capable of achieving.

The movie’s tissue-thin story is the most literal take imaginable on the “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl” plot. Part 1: Jim and Mary (living in adjacent apartments, unaware of one another) go through their morning activities and then put in a day at work, Mary as a telephone operator and Jim as a punch press operator. Part 2: Jim and Mary go to the beach after work, meet each other, and fall in love. Part 3: Jim and Mary are separated at an amusement park. They search for one another without success, return alone to their apartments, but ultimately are reunited.

Lonesome shares a number of thematic and visual similarities with both The Crowd and Sunrise (films to which it is invariably compared), but it differs in its presentation of the couple at the center of the story. Refusing to reduce Jim and Mary to symbols in the service of a larger message or to pump up their story with melodramatic action, director Fejos accepts the simple plot and everyday characters, employing a kind of anything-goes visual strategy to bring them to life on the screen.

After opening with an insert of a ringing bell on an alarm clock, the camera starts in close on Mary’s face, pulls back to reveal her in bed, holds as she rises and stretches, then follows her to a window where she raises the shade and lets the sunlight in. The camera continues to follow Mary through her apartment, occasionally cutting to a different shot, but preferring to stay with her in real time as she moves from task to task.

In many films of the period, the action in Mary’s room would have been covered in a single, stationary shot, either as an economical way to record the perfunctory, everyday actions or as a way to frame and define Mary by the limits of her tired, shabby apartment. But this is a strategy never adopted by Fejos. Instead, he films the sequence almost as if he has never seen someone wake up and get ready for work—as if he can’t imagine a more compelling activity. When the film cuts to Jim’s apartment, the camera tracks through it also, revealing information and following Jim around with the same curiosity and insistency it showed for Mary.

The rough, unplanned look of the photography along with a camera that pans, dollies, and precedes Jim and Mary with an almost cinema verite doggedness gives the film a kind of documentary immediacy. At other times, however, the film, in a schizophrenic shift in style, has a decidedly experimental/expressionistic look.

During an extended montage of Jim and Mary at work, the camera pans back and forth between the two. The image of a clock is superimposed on the border of the frame and slowly ticks off the hours yet to be worked. At one point, the camera tracks down a row of telephone operators, stopping on Mary as she works the switchboard, the mounting number of calls coming in represented by the faces of people superimposed around her, piling up in frame as demand increases. Meanwhile, Jim works at a punch press, pounding out the steady, grinding rhythm of the workday.

Later, in a complete departure from any kind of documentary reality, Jim and Mary are seen against a black background, framed from the waist up, sitting on the beach at night. This sound sequence was added for financial reasons (so it could be released as a talkie) rather than any artistic consideration, but there is something disarmingly artless about the moment. After the relentless movement and visual invention that has preceded it, the static shot is startling, occurring as it does in a kind of parentheses to the rest of the action.

Still wearing their swimsuits, Jim and Mary express their love for one another. The dialogue is unremarkable and awkward, but this only heightens an already uncomfortable feeling of honesty and naked exposure, both visually and emotionally. The scene ends with Jim and Mary matted into a shot of a fabricated beach, with what is obviously a miniature amusement park looming in the background. Although the image is in black and white, colors have been stenciled onto the amusement park, giving this moment, outside the rest of the film, a crude, childish sincerity.

It is clear from the way Lonesome is constructed and shot that Jim and Mary will end up together. As Fejos cuts back and forth between the two, they continually mirror each other’s thoughts and actions. It is almost as if they had once been one, were separated, and now can only be complete again if they are reunited with their spiritual counterpart. Late in the film, while searching for one another at the amusement park, Jim and Mary are seen in profile, on either side of a canvas wall, and for a moment, they are literally reflected images of each other.

Admittedly, Lonesome is an uneven film, at times oddly stilted and at others overly frenetic. Nevertheless, it is also visually exuberant, and Fejos’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach successfully marshals film techniques usually employed by Hitchcock, Gance, or Vertov. Although the film is far from being a stylish thriller, a historical epic, or even a head-scratching experimental film, Lonesome is, in its own way, just as ambitious. Maybe more importantly, it is a kind of film rarely seen on the big screen—then or now. It is a celebration of everyday life.

]]>https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/09/03/lonesome-1928/feed/0RudLonesomeLonesome 2Lonesome 3Lonesome 4Lonesome 5The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (1942)https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/08/10/the-loves-of-edgar-allan-poe-1942/
https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/08/10/the-loves-of-edgar-allan-poe-1942/#respondMon, 10 Aug 2015 17:49:09 +0000http://cinemamisfit.com/?p=228Continue reading →]]>Edgar Allan Poe is best known as a writer of macabre tales, but in the film The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, a different Poe is revealed, and the viewer is confronted with a personality even stranger than the one revealed in the pages of high school literature books.

With a running time of only 67 minutes,the film is forced to quickly sketch in or cover in voice-over narration large portions of Poe’s life. The troubled existence of a tortured writer; the dark, paranoid wellspring of Poe’s creativity; even his struggle with and eventual surrender to alcohol, these fascinating, even disturbing, aspects of his life are all de-emphasized in an effort to tell the larger story of Poe’s two great loves, which, surprisingly, turn out to be himself and—you guessed it—copyright law.

Eddie (as he is improbably known to family members) is more than ready to buttonhole anyone he meets and give them an earful about what a brilliant writer he is, but if his assessment isn’t met with immediate approval, the thin-skinned self-promoter storms off in a huff. The opinions of other characters in the film range from Thomas Jefferson’s “you show promise” to a unanimous thumbs-down from a group of printers who decide the publishing fate of The Raven. But there’s only one opinion Eddie truly cares about, and that opinion is his.

If you’ve ever wondered what two renowned writers like Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe would talk about if they met, this film has the answer. They’d talk about copyright law, of course! At length. And in great detail. As might be expected, Poe doesn’t restrict his analysis of copyright infringement to the famous; he’s more than willing to talk to anyone about it—particularly publishers who, understandably, don’t share his passion for the subject. Unable to hold down a job, Poe ends up discussing copyright law with grocers and landladies, a group that would much rather “discuss” when he’s going to pay his bills.

If Poe was alive today, he’d tell you himself just how terrific this movie is, and if you tried to record it, he’d give you a good tongue-lashing about copyright infringement.

]]>https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/08/10/the-loves-of-edgar-allan-poe-1942/feed/0RudedgarHouse In The Middlehttps://cinemamisfit.com/2015/05/23/house-in-the-middle/
https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/05/23/house-in-the-middle/#respondSat, 23 May 2015 16:50:57 +0000http://cinemamisfit.com/?p=256Continue reading →]]>In the midfifties, a civil defense short was created to address what can only be called the Tidiness Gap. Clearly, extensive human intel, backed up by U-2 flyover photos, was collected and analyzed before a single, inescapable conclusion was reached. And while no transcript exists of a presidential cabinet meeting in which this urgent matter was taken up, rumors and off-the-record comments seem to validate the following account:

Top General: So what are these Bolshevik bastards up to?

CIA Agent: General. Mr. President. I’m not going to soft-pedal this. I’m going to give it to you straight. They’re painting their houses.

Shocked silence.

CIA Agent: Not only that, they’re raking up the leaves in their yards.

A gasp from the back of the room.

The President (shaking his head): My god. It’s worse than we feared.

CIA Agent: Yes it is, sir. They’re also tidying up in their homes. Vacuuming. Dusting. Do you want me to go on?

The President: No. I’ve heard more than enough (long pause before rising and addressing the cabinet members). Gentlemen, this is unacceptable. We cannot allow a Tidiness Gap!

“The National Clean Up–Paint Up–Fix Up Bureau” (undoubtably a front organization for the CIA) snapped into action and produced The House in the Middle. The short begins with an aerial shot of Anytown, USA. “One American town looks like any other when you see it from an airplane window,” notes the narrator, leaving out the observation that once hydrogen bombs have been dropped, they all look pretty much the same–no matter where they’re viewed from. Since the short was intended for the outlying suburbs and towns not immediately in the kill zone of a ground zero explosion, the whole issue of large metropolitan areas being vaporized is discreetly sidestepped. The short also tends to focus on the atomic heat or “thermal wave” from a nuclear explosion and doesn’t have much to offer on the other side effects like . . . well, for one thing, radiation.

For the purposes of the short, Anytown, USA, is replicated by two one-story, one-room houses at the Nevada Proving Grounds. Despite the admittedly minimalistic representation, you’d be hard-pressed to single it out from any of hundreds of other towns in America—that is, if the two houses didn’t look like anomalous objects stranded in an deserted Daliesque landscape. A huge melting watch wouldn’t look out of place there.

Structure-wise, the two houses are identical. Inside, however, it’s a different story. House #1 is notable for its domestic clutter. Newspapers and magazines are left lying around, and tables are littered with junk. House #2, on the other hand, is spic-and-span. The trash has been thrown out and the tabletops cleared.

In a portentous tone of voice, the narrator enumerates the different steps in a nuclear explosion. First, there is the light flash! Then the thermal wave! Which is quickly followed by the blast wave! Surprisingly, both houses on the outskirts of the atomic detonation survive, but the clutter inside house #1 catches fire, and even though the structure survived the blast, it ends up burning to the ground.

After viewing this footage, it comes as something of a shock to realize that Hazel might have been America’s first line of defense against nuclear attack. Perhaps the Civil Defense Seal should have been replaced by the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

A final test is staged with three houses, and ultimately, what the short comes down to is a retelling of The Three Little Pigs—with the atom bomb in the role of the Big Bad Wolf, huffing and puffing and blowing the houses down. House #1 is an eyesore with leaves and trash in the yard. House #2 (the house in the middle) is painted and its yard uncluttered. House #3, however, is dilapidated and rundown.

To no one’s surprise, the house in the middle survives the nuclear explosion, but if the test had been an actual Russian sneak attack, not only would the owner of the house in the middle have lived to dust and mop another day, he would have had the extra civic satisfaction of helping dig mass graves for thousands of irradiated corpses. Still, when the fastidious homeowner considered the rubble on either side of his house, he could at lease take satisfaction in being alive.

“I tried to warn them,” he might say. Then the tumorous growth on his shoulder, which had appeared soon after the nuclear blast and increased in size until it became a second freakish head, would add, “Yes, you did. You and the National Clean Up–Paint Up–Fix Up Bureau.”

Here’s the helpful warning in its full-length glory, produced as it actually was by the friendly folks at the Paint, Varnish, and Lacquer Association. No doubt it was the hit of their convention that year (and what a rip-roaring event that had to be).

Early in The Spirit, there’s a no-holds-barred, over-the-top slug fest between the Spirit and his long-time nemesis, the Octopus. As they pound on each other with toilets and ridiculously oversized wrenches, it’s impossible not to notice the industrial sludge they are covered with, which disturbingly looks like some kind of excrement. Sadly, this would be entirely appropriate since the one thing Frank Miller’s film succeeds in doing is taking a giant dump on Will Eisner’s creation.

Frank Miller, the comic book artist, had nothing but respect for Will Eisner’s genius as a graphic storyteller (the two men were actually good friends), but Frank Miller, the film director, seems to have little or no faith in Eisner’s innovative and influential comic. The humor, humanity, and sheer joy of visual storytelling have all been stripped away, and Miller, in a desperate attempt to give The Spirit movie a kind of “edge cred,” has retrofitted the comic with a contemporary “attitude,” pumped it up with exaggerated, over-the-top action, and injected it with a terminal dose of “irony” steroids.

From the picture’s first frame, Miller’s Spirit is at odds with Eisner’s comic. This is a film that cries out to be set in the late ’40s, but instead is set in some kind of yester-today, a place where Miller can pick and choose the elements he wants: cell phones and high-tech weaponry from the present, classic cars and tough-guy dialogue from the ’40s. It isn’t the past, and it isn’t the present but instead an unexplained mix of the two, with only one real purpose: to make life easy for a filmmaker who can’t decide how to tell his story.

Then there’s the look of the film. In the comic, the Spirit’s adventures were never genre specific and ranged from noir to sci-fi, gothic to comedy, and fantasy to drama, with Eisner adapting and changing the style, tone, and storytelling techniques he used to create each comic. Frank Miller, on the other hand, seems trapped within a single cinematic approach and is incapable of modifying or even altering it. His style is graphic (both in film and comics), embracing the two-dimensionality of the image, often eliminating backgrounds altogether, depending on bold, striking compositions. This approach works fine for something that is cold and kinetic like Miller’s Sin City but is inappropriate for The Spirit, which depends on pacing, atmosphere, and character nuance.

Another difference is the “cartoony” look of The Spirit comic. Will Eisner chose this style because he wanted to emphasize the “acting” and show, not just the expressions of his characters, but the range of their reactions. In contrast, the characters in Miller’s Spirit are exaggerated freaks: one-dimensional, one-note stereotypes stuck in a single emotion without the ability or need to express anything except their one defining characteristic (e.g., maniacal bad guy, sexy love interest, and idiotic henchman). As for the character of the Spirit, Miller has turned him into a kind of Batman/Wolverine hybrid, super strong and with the ability to self-regenerate after being mortally wounded. The comic book Spirit, by contrast, was a smart, funny detective, and the only concession made to the superhero genre was to give him a secret identity. Other than that, he was just another guy.

Even putting aside whether the movie is a faithful adaptation of the comic or not, taken on its own, the script for the Spirit is hamstrung and bogged down by lazy writing. The Spirit and the Octopus go mono-o-monologue in scene after scene, breaking into either a full-blown rant or sharing a telling memory, providing unasked for character motivation and backstory. Samuel L. Jackson as the Octopus can almost get away with his maniacal tirades since this is tried-and-true (if not particularly original) evil madman behavior. Gabriel Macht as the Spirit isn’t so lucky. He comes off as slightly addled when the Spirit unexpectedly reveals his deepest secrets to a stray cat or, even worse, simply talks to himself.

Late in the film, the pointless appearance of Nazi iconography signals the moment the story is completely out of ideas. A stone eagle and a swastika provide the background for the Octopus as he struts around in SS drag, carrying on about how he and the Spirit really aren’t all that different from one another. But why the Nazi paraphernalia? Is it to help distract from yet another backstory filibuster? Or maybe it’s a ham-fisted attempt to comment on the Octopus’s plan to become not just a superman but a god. More than likely, the black uniforms and swastikas are there simply because they look sinister and cool.

Frank Miller can be forgiven many wrongs: unintentionally trashing a great character, directing a film that seems designed to disappoint both Sin City and Spirit fans, and even killing the possibility of someone else ever making a Spirit film. But here’s the real problem: it’s difficult to imagine anyone seeking out Eisner’s creation on the printed page after seeing this film, and that would be unforgivable.

Fortunately, every Spirit story Will Eisner ever drew is collected in a set of 26 hardback books. The Spirit Archives contain some of the best visual storytelling ever done by anyone in any medium. Maybe Frank Miller should take another look at it.

]]>https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/04/08/the-spirit-movie/feed/0Rudspirit 1spirit 2spirit 3spirit 4spirit 5spirit 6spirit 7spirit 8Curse of the Faceless Man (Plus Audio Review of The Lost Missile)https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/03/02/curse-of-the-faceless-man-plus-audio-review-of-the-lost-missile/
https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/03/02/curse-of-the-faceless-man-plus-audio-review-of-the-lost-missile/#respondMon, 02 Mar 2015 02:35:12 +0000http://cinemamisfit.com/?p=144Continue reading →]]>A mummy movie is never a good idea. Why? Because there’s only one way to make a mummy threatening and that’s by having him lumber after a woman who appears to suffer from an inner-ear disorder. Incapable of sustained equilibrium, the woman stumbles and falls for no apparent reason. Not only that, she runs in a blind panic, when even a brisk walk could easily outdistance her bandaged assailant.

When faced with the prospect of making a mummy movie, there are really only two choices: either (a) go the Stephen Sommers route and completely jettison the idea of a slow-moving, ancient Egyptian prince wrapped in bandages or (b) don’t make the movie at all. Really. This should always be the default choice.

Curse of the Faceless Man, however, chooses to go down the cinematic road less traveled—and by less traveled, I mean gone down once and only once. It’s bad enough that the “faceless man” of the title is ancient and slow, but he’s also made of stone! This not only makes him the slowest mummy in film history, but for the first half of the film, even when he does manage to move, he is only capable of modest, sustained activity for minutes at a time.

Later in Curse of the Faceless Man, three doctors sum up the situation this way:

1st doctor (referring to stone mummy): It cannot be alive.

2nd doctor: Not the way we know life.

3rd doctor: It is not dead. Not dead as we know it.

Unexpressed by anyone, but probably occurring to all of them, is the following:

1st doctor: But it is slow.

2nd doctor: Yes. Slow as we know slow.

3rd doctor: Old-lady-with-a-bad-hip-using-a-walker slow.

Absent a threat with the menace to drive the story forward, Curse of the Faceless Man is powered instead by backstory. Six people with various doctorates spend the majority of the film standing in cramped rooms, speculating wildly about the possible origins and abilities of a stone mummy unearthed at a nearby dig in Pompeii. Occasionally, Tina, the fiancée of one of the doctors, joins in, but unknown to anyone (even Tina), she has a psychic connection with the Faceless Man, which is more than can be said for the connection she has with her stiff of a boyfriend, Paul.

Much of Curse of the Faceless Man plays like an extended sequence from What’s My Line? First, there’s a series of questions, hypotheses, wild guesses, and then—ding!—someone figures out the answer, and the film advances to the next scene.

“The mummy is energized by light!”

Ding!

“The mummy tried to pin a brooch on Tina. Two thousand years ago that was how a man showed his love for a woman.”

Ding!

“The mummy is an ancient Etruscan slave. He must have been in an Egyptian temple when Vesuvius exploded. The vats filled with embalming fluids probably toppled over and poured down on him. He was flash-baked like a clay figure in a kiln and his body encased in a layer of stone.”

Ding! Ding! Ding!

This relentless speculation could be over looked if it was an excuse to photograph scenic locations in and around Pompeii. But this is not the case. One man digging a hole stands in for an entire archeological excavation. A plaque in front of a building, which is clearly Griffith Observatory, proclaims itself to be the Museo di Pompeii Napoli. Finally, in a desperate bid to convince the audience they are somewhere other than Southern California, the same boxy European cars turn up scene after scene, inexplicably driving down roads not in Pompeii but in Griffith Park or on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Eventually, the film dispenses—not only with the idea of rising action—but with the idea of “action” of any kind. Freed from the twin burdens of believable dialogue and character development, the filmmakers deliver the exposition in the most direct and economical way possible: a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Dr. Emmanuel (one of the many “doctors” in the film) hypnotizes and regresses Tina back to an earlier life. Later, he invites Paul, Tina’s fiancée, to his office so Paul can listen to the tape recording that was made. Tina’s flat, emotionless voice fills the room, and the camera stubbornly holds on a tight shot of the tape recorder, only occasionally cutting away to reaction shots of Dr. Emmanuel and Paul.

The following is an example of how possible unused footage might have been edited together.

TAPE RECORDER (Tina’s voice): The skies have been dark since yesterday when Father returned from the senate in Rome. I feel that something terrible is going to happen.

CUT TO:

DR. EMMANUEL AND PAUL

Dr. Emmanuel holds a finger up to his lips—gesturing for silence.

CUT TO:

TAPE RECORDER (Tina’s voice):

There’s been no rain. No clouds. Just the gray light over Pompeii that depresses me as I look through my window at Vesuvius and remember the curse placed upon my family by the slave Quintus Aquarius.

CUT TO:

PAUL

He appears deep in thought, possibly weighing what action to take. The camera tilts down to a pad of paper on a desk. On it is written: Drop off suit at cleaners. Pick up cat food from store. Check out Stabian baths.

CUT TO:

TAPE RECORDER (Tina’s voice):

I fear the slave and his strength, for he is the most powerful gladiator in all the empire. He has threatened to escape his cell and take me from my house.

CUT TO:

PAUL

hunched over the desk, assembling a five-masted schooner inside of a glass bottle.

CUT TO:

TAPE RECORDER (Tina’s voice):

Yet, how can I return his love? I am an aristocrat. He is a slave. It is not . . . there—is that a rumbling in the ground? The house shakes.

CUT TO:

DR. EMMANUEL AND PAUL

Dr. Emmanuel hands a gun to Paul. Paul spins the cylinder and holds the gun up to his head. There is a moment’s hesitation, followed by a look of disappointment as the hammer comes down on an empty chamber. Paul hands the gun back to Dr. Emmanuel.

TAPE RECORDER (Tina’s voice):

I hear shouts in the streets. It is a volcano. It is Vesuvius. Our house is falling above me . .

Confronted with the problem of reuniting the plodding mummy with his reincarnated lover, the undramatic but ultimately time-saving decision is made to have Tina come to the Faceless Man (who the doctors have managed to capture and restrain). In a hypnotic daze, Tina frees him from his leather bonds and then faints, setting off what must be a kind of Pavlovian response in mummies, the Faceless Man immediately taking her up in his arms. He deliberately puts one stone foot in front of the other and starts off on the slow, unbelievably tedious journey to the beach—15 miles away!

In an effort to maintain the breakneck pace that’s been established, the film CUTS TO:

PAUL, THE LOCAL INSPECTOR, AND FOUR DOCTORS

gathered around a phone, waiting for it to ring.

The doctors look spent, drained of all hypotheses and backstory, unable to advance the story any longer through word or action. All they can do is wait . . .

Until finally, the phone rings! Having dispensed with the idea of “rising action,” the film, in a heady disregard for audience expectations, turns its back on anything that might conceivably pass for a climax. The Faceless Man, reliving his actions on the day Vesuvius exploded, hits the beach at exactly the same moment the boxy European police cars pull up onto the sand. Paul and the inspector, along with the doctors and the entire police force of four men, spill out of the cars and race across the beach.

The Faceless Man backhands one of the policemen in the face and, with Tina still in his arms, heads for the surf, where he . . . Well . . . where he begins to fizz and dissolve like a giant Alka-Seltzer tablet.

Really. In nothing flat, the stone mummy is gone.

As it turns out, Tina remembers nothing of what has happened, and in a completely unexpected turn of events, Paul passes up the opportunity for a long-winded explanation, instead deciding it’s “just as well” she has no memory of the Faceless Man.

One can only guess at the fate that awaited Tina if Paul and the doctors hadn’t arrived when they did. Actually, that isn’t quite true. It’s fairly obvious what would have happened. The Faceless Man would have carried Tina into the water. He would have dissolved, and Tina, finding herself alone on the beach at dawn, would have been forced to thumb a ride back to town. Not the most horrible fate imaginable, but certainly inconvenient.

One reason Curse of the Faceless Man is such a disappointment is because it was written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Edward L. Cahn, the creative team responsible for It! The Terror from Beyond Space. While It! is a classic example of a B movie overcoming the limitations of a low budget with talent and imagination, Curse of the Faceless Man, at best, is perfunctory and, at worst, lazy and amateurish. Not every effort can be a home run, but this isn’t even a bunt. In any case, Curse of the Faceless Man remains a cautionary tale for anyone thinking about making a mummy movie. The lesson? Don’t. That’s all there is to it—don’t.

THE LOST MISSILE

Jerome Bixby wrote many science fiction and horror films, but one of his odder efforts was a movie called The Lost Missile. While more fun and entertaining than Curse of the Faceless Man, it is also weirdly wrongheaded in its bizarre story choices.

A missile from somewhere in outer space (it’s never revealed where it came from or why) circles the earth, leaving a charred swath of destruction in its wake. Unfortunately, the threat posed by the missile is so arbitrary and unlikely it’s impossible to take seriously; it doesn’t even work as a metaphor for nuclear war. In some ways, the film is ahead of its time in foregrounding women’s issues and concerns, but unaccountably, it manages to do so in a way that makes them look both selfish and silly. The Lost Missile is one of a kind, and I do my best to make sense of it in my audio review.

Early in 1968, Playboy magazine contacted me about the possibility of interviewing Stanley Kubrick. It was an offer I eagerly accepted. 2001: A Space Odyssey had just opened, and critics, whether they loved the film or hated it, were united on one point: nothing like it had ever been seen on a movie screen before.

But were they right?

In 1965, with little or no fanfare, a movie containing many of the same elements as 2001 had been released. I was in complete ignorance of this film, but by the end of my interview with “Mr. Kubrick,” I would learn more about it and the film’s director, Bernard Knowles, than I ever cared to know.

For reasons that will soon become apparent, the interview was never published. One editor at Playboy explained the situation to me this way: “The god damned interview isn’t even with Stanley Kubrick! And, oh yeah, if we publish it, he’s going to fucking sue us!”

It’s been many years since the interview took place, and, sadly, Mr. Kubrick is no longer with us. The time seems right, however, to finally share this bit of cinematic history with the general public. If nothing else, the interview might help explain Mr. Kubrick’s reclusive habits in later years.

The Interview

Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap.

In the darkness, there was the sound of tail leader on a 16mm take-up reel spinning around and around. I rose from my chair and flipped on the light switch — revealing Stanley Kubrick seated next to a portable 16mm projector on my desk.

KUBRICK: Quite an eye-opener, isn’t it?

I didn’t respond immediately, and in the silence, Mr. Kubrick tugged self-consciously at his beard — causing it to shift position on his face. Anyway, that’s what I believed I saw. I rubbed my eyes and, after a moment or two, was uncertain whether the beard had actually moved or not.

My lack of enthusiasm for the film seemed to catch Mr. Kubrick by surprise.

KUBRICK: Of course, the whole thing plays differently in a theater on a big screen.

PLAYBOY: I’m sure it does.

Our initial meeting had been cordial enough and the interview progressed in a satisfactory, if not particularly remarkable, manner … that is, until I questioned Mr. Kubrick about his influences.

PLAYBOY: Eisenstein. Lang. Max Ophuls. In the past, you’ve mentioned these filmmakers as being an influence on your work. Would you add any others?

KUBRICK: Bernard Knowles.

If I had taken a drink of water at that moment, I might have done a spit-take.

PLAYBOY: Who?

That was when Mr. Kubrick directed me to turn off the lights. The 16mm projector he had brought with him was threaded and ready to go. For the next sixty-two minutes, it’s possible that I stared at the screen with my jaw hanging open.

In the darkness, the shaft of light from the projector must have revealed my expression.

KUBRICK: Amazing, isn’t it?

PLAYBOY: That’s one way of putting it.

The “amazing” adventure begins.

I was watching something called Spaceflight IC-1: An Adventure in Space. It was directed by Bernard Knowles, a filmmaker Mr. Kubrick seemed to rank alongside Lang and Ophuls. Unfortunately, to make some sense of what follows, a brief description of the movie is required.

It is the year 2015, and the earth’s resources have been severely depleted by overpopulation, allowing an Orwellian government (apparently lacking any sense of irony, having named itself RULE) to take control in the ensuing chaos. With earth facing an uncertain future, the decision is made to send spaceship IC-1 (“IC” for intergalactic colony) to the nearest inhabitable planet in hopes of reestablishing the human race.

Dr. Garth (left) the world’s first “closed-circuit man.”

The crew consists of four men, four women, three children (two boys, one girl), and a head. The “head” is Dr. Garth, the first “closed-circuit man.” He feels nothing (emotionally or physically) and has a machine for a body. In appearance, Dr. Garth can best be described as a head inside of an upside-down fishbowl set on top of a filing cabinet that has the drawers turned to face the wall. The remainder of the crew is in suspended animation, having been placed on the spaceship in cryogenic hibernation.

Spaceship IC-1.

The mid-section of spaceship IC-1 is a huge Ferris wheel like structure, a centrifuge that creates gravity by continually rotating. Unaccountably, interior shots of the ship reveal a single hallway (the floor flat, not curved as might be expected), with two doors on the left wall, and another door at the end of the hallway. There is also a stairway that leads to … well, it isn’t exactly clear where it leads.

One year into a twenty-five year journey, the captain of spaceship IC-1 is informed that he is no longer able to conceive children. The captain’s guilt and frustration at this turn of events (the mission of IC-1, after all, is procreation and re-population) drives him to act like a sort of Captain Queeg in outer space.

Mutineer checks on status of crew members in suspended animation.

Eventually, a mutiny takes place, and for reasons too tedious to recount, a crew member is revived from suspended animation. The untested process transforms the crew member into a rampaging maniac who (conveniently for the mutineers) murders the captain, before he (even more conveniently) dies.

No longer subject to RULE’s overbearing dictates or the captain’s arbitrary, tyrannical authority, spaceship IC-1 continues on its journey to Earth 2, where, one can only hope, a free and democratic society will be established.

Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap.

KUBRICK: (agitated) Do you know what this film is?

PLAYBOY: Really bad?

KUBRICK: It’s a confession – at twenty-four frames per second!

Confession? I had no idea what Mr. Kubrick was talking about. Besides, wasn’t the quote, “Truth at twenty-four frames per second”? And how did Godard get mixed up in the interview?

“A Space Odyssey” or “An Adventure in Space”?

KUBRICK: The living quarters inside the centrifuge. The crew members in hibernation. The god damn title, for that matter. Adventure in Space. A Space Odyssey. Where do you think I got it all?

I hesitated before answering.

PLAYBOY: Spaceflight IC-1?

KUBRICK: Of course! Bernard Knowles. I tell you, the man’s a genius! And I’m nothing but a fraud! Hal 9000. The “closed-circuit man.” They’re one in the same. Except Knowles captured the dichotomy of a dualistic future perfectly in a single, startling image. Intellect vs. emotion. A being who is half human …

PLAYBOY: … half filing cabinet?

Mr. Kubrick stood up, planted a hand on either side of my desk, and leaned forward.

KUBRICK: My film is nothing but a sterile rip-off, hiding behind a huge budget, pretending to be something it isn’t — original! Knowles’ film is alive with human tension, primal urges, and …

PLAYBOY: … soap opera melodramatics?

KUBRICK: Are you being intentionally obtuse?

Practically nose to nose with Mr. Kubrick, I couldn’t help but have serious doubts about the authenticity of his beard.

Then, as if on cue, the door to my office swung open — revealing a second Stanley Kubrick!

KUBRICK #2: Sorry I’m late. There was a scheduling mix-up with the secretary …

Without warning, Kubrick #1 lunged forward. I reached out to stop him but only came away with a handful of fake beard.

Kubrick #1: One way or another, people will know. 2001 is really my movie!

He looked straight at me.

KUBRICK #1: If you won’t accept the truth from me, you’ll accept it from him!

With that, Kubrick #1 dropped the jacket, grabbed the beard from my hand, and was out the door.

End of interview.

Coda

Later that day, I received a phone call from the police station. The two Kubricks had been picked up fighting in the street and charged with assault and disturbing the peace. Kubrick #2 either had lost his wallet, or what seems more likely, had it “lifted” during the altercation. With both men claiming to be Stanley Kubrick, the desk sergeant asked me to come down and identify the authentic Kubrick.

Unfortunately, I only succeeded in making matters worse. Faced with a line-up of bearded men, I misidentified Kubrick #1 (who it now seems clear was Bernard Knowles) as Stanley Kubrick, resulting in the real Kubrick spending the night in jail.

A week later, after tempers had cooled and apologies been offered, Mr. Kubrick agreed to a second interview, but only on the condition the first interview was never published and that someone other than myself conduct the new interview. It’s probably just as well my initial interview never saw publication since actual quotes from the real Kubrick would have amounted to little more than: “Ooph!” “Ouch!” and “Ugggh.”

Kubrick #1 was never seen again, and Bernard Knowles never acknowledged that he was the man impersonating Stanley Kubrick and delivering a fraudulent confession. To be honest, I have no solid evidence it was actually him, but just the same, it seems the most likely explanation.

I have to admit, that after all these years, I’m still not sure how I feel about Bernard Knowles. Lunatic hack? Or a visionary without any storytelling sense?

Use of holographic display 12 years before Princess Leia’s plea for help in Star Wars.

Besides the similarities to 2001, IC-1 also anticipated a number of other science fictions films. At one point in IC-1, a funeral is held aboard the spaceship, and it is strikingly similar to a scene 18 years later at the end of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. There is also the use of holographic images, predating similar effects in the Star Wars movies. Finally, the children on board IC-1 have psychic abilities, long before any number of such “gifted” children turn up in the books and films of Stephen King.

I still have in my possession the 16mm projector and reel of film left behind by Kubrick #1. Every now and then I set up the projector, turn off the lights, and watch Spaceflight IC-1. Watching the film, I can’t help but wonder if more than coincidence is behind the similarities to 2001, and yet …

Spaceflight IC-1: Groundbreaking film or cinematic sleeping aid?

And yet, long before the mutiny takes place, I always start to nod off and then it’s only a matter of time before I’m sound asleep.

]]>https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/02/14/spaceflight-ic-1/feed/0RudAC-1 1ic2ic1 3ic1 4ic1 5ic1 6ic1 7ic1 8ic1 9ic1 10X-Files: I Want to Believehttps://cinemamisfit.com/2015/02/02/x-files-i-want-to-believe/
https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/02/02/x-files-i-want-to-believe/#respondMon, 02 Feb 2015 17:31:41 +0000http://cinemamisfit.com/?p=249Continue reading →]]>An expanse of flat, snow-covered land bisected by a two-lane highway. A car has veered off the road and plowed into the snow. The police inspect the area, looking for clues that might explain the accident. This is either (a) a scene from early in Fargo or (b) toward the end of X-Files: I Want to Believe. If you chose (a) and (b), you’re correct!

The two films are remarkably similar, except for small differences like Fargo is funny and has surprising, interesting characters, while X-Files: I Want to Believe is deadly serious, with an established cast that’s dull and predictable. The two films also feature female characters in law enforcement. And there’s lots of snow . . . in both films. Actually, that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

Surprising absence of aliens in X-Files: I Want to Believe.

But forget about Fargo. X-Files: I Want to Believe doesn’t even have that much in common with X-Files: The TV Series or X-Files: ThePrevious Movie. If you’re looking for government cover-ups, ETs, implants, and alien hybrids—you know, X-Files kinds of stuff—this might not be the movie for you.

The TV series featured two kinds of stories: mythology and stand-alone. The ongoing mythology stories involved sinister aliens, and the stand-alones could be about anything from bionic werewolves to government AI programs run amuck. It’s disappointing the alien invasion isn’t wrapped up or even advanced in X-Files: I Want to Believe, but since a karmic vampire or sentient virus are always only a clue or unexpected revelation away, the absence of an extraterrestrial threat can be forgiven.

A cool creature you won’t be seeing in X-Files: I Want to Believe.

What can’t be forgiven is Mulder’s ridiculous beard. For the first third of the film, before he shaves, Mulder doesn’t look rugged or crazed or even unkempt. He just looks idiotic. Then there’s the ridiculous fright wig on Billy Collins. To be honest, it’s a relief when Skinner shows up, and he’s not sporting a mustache or a toupee.

This film has many problems besides goofy-looking characters, and they’d be a lot easier to put up with if the story’s payoff was a transdimensional entity or even a sasquatch, for Chrissakes. Unfortunately, what the menace turns out to be is . . . a clairvoyant pedophile priest? In a story about an organ-harvesting scheme? Which turns out to be some kind of lame-ass Frankenstein story?

Another cool creature you won’t be seeing in X-Files: I Want to Believe.

Actually, X-Files: I Want to Believe is closer to something like The Brain ThatWouldn’t Die, except Brain is an off-the-wall B movie with a ridiculous but entertaining story about a henpecked husband whose wife is reduced to a hectoring, demanding head screaming orders at him from a pan on a table. X-Files, on the other hand, has a couple of thugs attempting to make money off of head transplants.

As lazy and half baked as the story is, the lazy half baked dialogue is even worse. A good portion of what Scully has to say is a variation of the following:

“This isn’t my life anymore.”

“I don’t work with Fox Mulder anymore.”

“This isn’t my job anymore.”

“Mulder, it’s over.”

In “head to head” comparison, Brain That Wouldn’t Die cooler than X-Files: I Want to Believe.

After awhile, this starts to sound less like dialogue from a character and more like the mantra of a filmmaker who no longer wants anything to do with his creation. But if Chris Carter still harbors hopes of relaunching the original show or possibly a series of TV movies and is only marking time with this latest effort, then someone needs to take him aside and have a little talk with him. To paraphrase Scully, “Carter, it’s over.” And no, I don’t want to believe.

]]>https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/02/02/x-files-i-want-to-believe/feed/0Rudx 1x 2x 3x 4x 5Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attackhttps://cinemamisfit.com/2015/01/05/giant-monsters-all-out-attack/
https://cinemamisfit.com/2015/01/05/giant-monsters-all-out-attack/#respondMon, 05 Jan 2015 03:42:15 +0000http://cinemamisfit.com/?p=459Continue reading →]]> At the beginning of Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Godzilla has been absent from the Tokyo-leveling scene for something like fifty years. Judging by his appearance, he wasn’t hibernating during that time, but instead pursued a strict regimen of eating donuts and drinking beer. Seen in profile stomping through the wreckage of a burning city, all Godzilla needs is a wife-beater t-shirt, and you’ve got a giant reptilian Jake Lamotta, gone to seed and lashing out at everything around him.

The first in a trio of monsters to go up against Godzilla is Baragona, a ridiculous-looking creature with floppy ears and a horn for a nose. Apart from the ability to burrow underground there’s not much that separates him from any other giant monster. Playing Joey Lamotta to Godzilla’s Jake, Baragon gets the crap beaten out of him and disappears from the film, never to be seen again.

King Ghidorah, on the other hand, is a monster of legendary proportions. His terrible wrath is recorded in ancient lore and his return foreseen in prophecies of doom. Just the same, when Ghidorah finally makes his big entrance, he finds himself in the tricky position of having to live up to a possibly over-hyped reputation.

Still, there’s no denying that Ghidorah is gigantic! And can fly! And has three heads! Energy bolts crackling from each mouth!

And he’s a Guardian Monster! Not every behemoth can lay claim to that title. Actually, only three monsters come to mind. And now that I think about it, Baragon and Mothra are the other two.

Maybe it isn’t such a big deal after all. Forget I mentioned it.

Preoccupied with thoughts like “Just what is Ghidorah the King of, anyway?” and trying to decide whether the over-hyped monster is a has-been or a never-was, it comes as something of a shock to realize the three-headed flash in the pan is dead. Killed by Godzilla.

Next up is Mothra, and guess what–Godzilla also kills Mothra, kind of leaving the story with nowhere to go. Unaccountably, the expiring moth explodes in a Disney-esque burst of shimmering lights, and his sparkling, iridescent life force envelops Ghidorah, bringing the fallen Guardian back to life.

Presented with a second chance to make good on all the inflated claims made about him, Ghidorah rises like a golden, three-headed phoenix, ready to do battle with Godzilla one more time and…

And Godzilla kills him.

At this point, the film comes dangerously close to jumping genres and turning into Groundhog Day for giant monsters. Ghidorah is resurrected one more time by the thousands of souls contained in an ancient piece of crockery, and, yet again, he is killed. Fortunately for all concerned, the third time is indeed a charm and Ghidorah remains dead, or at least has the good sense to play possum.

This movie has many problems, and predictable, one-sided monster face-offs are only the beginning. There’s also a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about Godzilla being the personification of the pain and death caused by Japan in the Pacific during WWII. Trust me, this film doesn’t have enough going for it to worry about a second overlay of meaning; First take care of business and stage fun, surprising monster battles before dragging in a bunch of high falutin’ metaphors.

Finally, the special effects are an uneasy hybrid of guys in monster suits and CGI. Towards the end of this final series of Godzilla films, the mix between miniature sets, rubber monsters, and CGI gets pretty good, but here, instead of creating it’s own oddball reality, it just comes off as too ambitious at best, and cheesy at worst.

Make no mistake about it, Godzilla is definitely kicking monster butt in this film, but as it turns out (and who could have guessed this?) you need more than that. I ‘m out!